Thursday, July 28, 2016

One thing hasn’t changed since Democrats first
nominated a Clinton for president in 1992.

A national political convention is still “the ideal
forum -- perhaps the only forum left – for what has proved to be a remarkably
enduring form of American folk art: the political oration.” So wrote The New
Yorker nearly a quarter century ago.

“In an age of sound-bites and manufactured images, it
turns out, we still appreciate the real thing, the stem-winder. We’re a people
that likes to orate, and to be orated
at,” an unsigned “Talk of the Town” column in the magazine’s July 27, 1992
issue said.

Some of the best political speakers of the era had just
spoken at Madison Square Garden, where presidential nominee Bill Clinton shared
his very personal story of growing up fatherless with his hard-working mother
and devoted grandparents.

“I still believe in a place called Hope,” Clinton
said, extolling the simple values of his hometown.

Surprisingly, in the age of Instagram and
140-character tweets, nearly 26 million people tuned into the 2016 Democratic
convention’s first night, when first lady Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders
spoke, according to the Nielsen TV ratings.

That was about 3 million more viewers than watched the
Republican convention’s first night, with Melania Trump. When the final numbers
are in, this year’s conventions likely will have drawn more viewers than in
2012 or 2008.

Why do people still care about this ancient form of
political communication?

My guess is that everybody loves a good story, and,
this year especially voters are hungry for emotional connection.

Since Ronald Reagan painted rhetorical pictures of morning
in America, most politicians have used political convention speeches to
inspire. There’s an art to giving a speech that tugs at heartstrings and shows
personal values without being cloying. There’s also an art to turning complex
issues into understandable take-aways.

People don’t want the pros and cons of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership; they want When Bill Met Hillary.

Bill Clinton did not disappoint in his speech Tuesday
night. Clinton made his wife’s career in politics and government sound like a
love story in a movie. Fighting the knock that Hillary Clinton is a status-quo
candidate, the former president said: “She’s the best darn change-maker I ever
met in my life.”

One of the main stories out of the Republican
convention in Cleveland was Melania Trump’s speech. Unfortunately, the news was
about echoes of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech. Trump had lifted several phrases
of seemingly personal stories about family and parental values.

While most leading Republicans stayed away from Donald
Trump’s convention, the presidential candidate used his acceptance speech to
paint a dark picture of the state of America – and to bash Clinton.

In Philadelphia, Democrats offered a brighter view of
America, waving “Love trumps hate” signs and often talking about love -- when
they weren’t blasting Trump.

“We are all neighbors and we must love neighbors as
ourselves,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Clinton’s new running mate, said,
before mocking Trump.

Vice President Joe Biden unified the raucous crowd by
emphasizing the importance of the middle class, a group Biden said Trump
neither understands nor empathizes with. Trump has “no clue” how to make
America great, Biden said.

Sen. Cory Booker of New
Jersey, a rising Democratic star, said: “Patriotism is love of country, but you
can’t love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen . . . We
are not called to be a nation of tolerance. We are called to be a nation of
love.”

Michelle Obama stirred emotions with personal
reflections about her family: “I wake up every morning in a house that was
built by slaves and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent, black
young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

“I am more optimistic about the future of America than
ever before,” President Barack Obama said Wednesday night. “There has never
been a man or a woman – not me, not Bill – more qualified than Hillary Clinton
to serve as president,” he said.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Alice Roosevelt Longworth would have loved this week’s
Republican National Convention.

Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter had a throw pillow in her
sitting room embroidered with the line: “If you can’t say something good about
someone, sit right here by me.”

Republicans in Cleveland richly rewarded viewers who
wanted to hear nothing good about Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t just the wrong
choice for president; she’s a criminal, they charged.

“Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!” delegates at
Quicken Loans Arena shouted, leaping to their feet and shaking their fists. And
when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor, indicted
Clinton’s performance and character in his speech Tuesday night, the crowd
bellowed “Guilty!” after each new charge.

Republicans will see how it feels starting Monday,
when the Democratic National Convention opens in Philadelphia and attempts to turn
Republican Donald J. Trump’s into Public Enemy No. 1.

Character assassination has a long, colorful history
in presidential politics. A newspaper editor who supported Thomas Jefferson in
the bitter election of 1800 wrote of John Adams that he had “a hideous
hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force nor firmness of a man,
nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

But the sustained attacks on
Clinton were a new level of mudslinging.

“She lied about her emails, she lied about her server,
she lied about Benghazi, she lied about sniper fire – why she even lied about
why her parents named her Hillary,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
declared.

The name claim stems from 1995 when the then-first
lady said her mother always told her she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the
first man to conquer Mount Everest. But Clinton was born in 1947; Sir Edmund
made the climb in 1953. Her presidential campaign conceded in 2006 it was just
a “sweet family story.”

The GOP convention also showed rare disunity among the
party faithful. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a former presidential contender, refused
to attend, as did other Republican leaders. Some conservative delegates erupted
in anger after party leaders stifled a rules change that would have permitted
delegates to vote for candidates other than Trump.

On the convention’s first day, the chairman of the
Virginia delegation and former state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Ted
Cruz supporter, threw his credentials on the floor and marched out.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, who boarded the Trump train
late, sounded plaintive as he tried to unify Republicans. Only with Trump and
his running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence “do we have a chance for a better way,”
he said. Hardly a ringing endorsement.

“Let the other party go
on and on with its constant dividing up of people, always playing one group
against the other, as if group identity were everything,” said Ryan, the GOP’s vice
presidential nominee in 2012. “In America, aren’t we all supposed to be and see
beyond class, see beyond ethnicity and all those other lines drawn to set us apart
and lock us into groups?”

Cruz infuriated some delegates when he used his time
at the podium Wednesday night not to endorse Trump but to give what sounded like
his first presidential campaign speech of 2020. Delegates booed Cruz and
shouted, “Trump! Trump! Trump!” as the presidential nominee walked in.

The most peculiar knock on Clinton came from former
GOP presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson, who said one of Clinton’s heroes in
college and the subject of her senior thesis was radical organizer Saul Alinsky.
In the forward to one of his later books, Alinsky acknowledged Lucifer as the
first radical organizer.

“So are we willing to elect someone as president who
has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?” Carson said. “Think
about that.”

Clinton, perhaps previewing her attacks next week, insisted
that Trump has nothing to offer the American people so he had to attack her. Trump’s
“business model is basically fraud and abuse,” she said. “He talks about America
First but his own products are made in a lot of countries that aren’t named
America.”

At their convention, Republicans found one thing on
which to agree: Hillary Clinton is their enemy. Democrats also agree on
something: Trump is theirs.

Even before he endorsed Clinton, rival Bernie Sanders
said he would work to defeat Trump. And when he finally did endorse her, Sanders
said he wanted to make one thing clear: “I intend to do everything I can to
make certain she is the next president.”

Thursday, July 14, 2016

A headline in Politico this week read: “Swing-state
stunner: Trump has edge in key states.” The only thing missing was an
exclamation point.

Commentators online and on TV chewed over the news
that three Quinnipiac University polls found Donald J. Trump slightly leading
Hillary Clinton in the battleground states of Florida and Pennsylvania. The two
candidates were tied in Ohio.

The next day, a headline across a full page of The
Wall Street Journal read: “Polls: Clinton, Trump Close in Key States.” Clinton
and Trump were in a statistical tie in Ohio; she had a 3-point lead in Iowa and
was ahead by 9 points in Pennsylvania, the latest Journal/NBC News/Marist polls
found.

And The New York Times reported the same day that Clinton and Trump were
tied nationally, each with 40 percent of registered voters, in the latest
Times-CBS News poll.

But a different national poll a few days earlier had showed
Clinton with a double-digit lead over Trump. Yet another put Trump ahead by
single digits.

A reader could get a headache trying to parse the
polls. But do polls matter? Not really. Not in July.

Everyone needs to remember that polls are a snapshot
in time. If there’s anything we know about this presidential campaign, it’s
unpredictable.

Yes, Democrats would rather see Clinton on a positive trajectory,
leaving Trump in the dust. And Republicans would like to see Trump steadily gaining
ground on Clinton, although so far, while she seems to be sliding, he’s not
rising.

But neither camp should get too exercised about polls
this far out. They rarely predict Election Day.

Better to sit back, take a deep breath and ponder how Britain
can change prime ministers in days while our presidential elections drag on for
years. Here’s a poll tidbit that rings true: Six in 10 Americans are worn out
by the presidential campaign.

Part of what’s driving the poll frenzy is news
organizations’ trying not to miss the Trump story – again. Many political
reporters -- I include myself -- thought Trump was a flash in the pan. Obviously,
we were wrong.

But whether Trump or Clinton wins in November, some pollsters
will be able to say they saw the incipient victory during the summer.

That’s fine, but voters need to know that analysts
can’t even agree on polling methods.

Some analysts fault Quinnipiac, contending
its sample size favors Trump by including larger percentages of white people and
fewer minorities than voted in various states in 2012. Since minority voting is rising and white
participation falling, Quinnipiac’s polls are biased, these critics say. We
won’t know who’s right for nearly four months.

Naturally, Trump brags about his positive poll numbers
and discounts those he doesn’t like. The Clinton campaign tweets that it always
expected battleground states to be tight, and supporters just have to work
harder.

When it comes to polls, though, you ain’t seen nothin’
yet.

After the Republican National Convention concludes
July 21 and the Democratic convention wraps July 28, we’ll be bombarded by polls.
The conventions traditionally bring the largest swings in polls during the
campaign, say political scientists Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien.
They studied polls from 1952 to 2008 for their 2012 book “The Timeline of
Presidential Elections.” Traditionally, first, one party’s candidate gets a
bounce and then the other.

In simpler times, most voters were just learning about
presidential candidates by watching convention coverage on TV, and the
conventions were spaced weeks apart.

The exposure traditionally gave the
nominees an average 5-point increase in the polls, Gallup reports, but the
convention bounce has declined since 1996.

In 2012, a year like this one with back-to-back
conventions, Republican Mitt Romney saw a 1-point dip after the GOP convention,
and President Barack Obama got a 3-point bounce after the Democratic convention.
Polls tightened by Election Day, as they usually do.

As always, the people who cast ballots Nov. 8 are the
only poll that matters. And there’s something else to consider: One in 10
voters for both Clinton and Trump say they could still change their minds before
Election Day.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

In a year of voter anger and disgust, we’re about to see
the coronations of two presidential candidates most Americans don’t like in a
spectacle of speeches paid for by fat cats and lobbyists.

National political conventions we will have – Republicans
July 18 to 21 in Cleveland and Democrats July 25 to 28 in Philadelphia – but why?

Because that’s the way we’ve always done it, since the
1830s anyway. Conventions are a relic of the 19th century, like
getting ice from a horse-drawn wagon.

Not even shiny new convention apps or 360-degree
cameras can save the conventions from their retro feel. Their original purpose was
to select each party’s presidential nominee and platform, but they’ve evolved
into four days of infomercials.

A few months ago, there was talk of a brokered or contested
convention, which would make the occasion both newsworthy and significant. Then
Donald Trump shocked the world by nailing the GOP nomination before Hillary
Clinton clinched the Democratic one. Anti-Trump forces still hope to derail his
train by changing convention rules, but don’t count on it.

And most people – especially the nominees -- don’t
care about party platforms. Sorry, Bernie.

The vice presidential candidates likely will be
announced before the conventions, so there goes another shred of news. You could go on vacation off the grid for a couple of weeks
and miss nothing, politically.

To be fair, some political scientists argue that having
national political conventions every four years is good for our democracy.
Conventions give the parties the opportunity, unfiltered by the news media, to reintroduce
themselves and their values to voters, they say.

But convention viewership on television has been sliding
since 1960. An exception came in 2008 when nearly two-thirds of all U.S.
households – a record -- watched at least one convention, an analysis by the
Nielsen TV ratings firm found. The numbers dropped in 2012.

Drawing the most convention viewers does not translate
into more votes for the party in November, however. Studies show most voters
watch only the convention of the party they already favor.

“It’s safe to say that ratings have little to no
electoral meaning,” University of Virginia professor Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal
Ball blog said in an analysis of the numbers.

This summer’s conventions may draw the curious. What
will Trump’s family say? What will Bernie Sanders’ supporters do? And if,
heaven forbid, the protests outside turn violent, people will watch.

Trump’s wife Melania, daughter Ivanka and sons Eric
and Donald Junior will speak in prime time, along with famous sports and
entertainment figures. No one ever knows what Trump himself will say.

President Obama previewed his role at the Democratic convention
Tuesday in his first joint appearance with Clinton. He still has the power to
energize the Democratic faithful in ways Hillary Clinton can only dream of.

Speaking at a national convention can be a career
boost, as Obama demonstrated in 2004, so expect a parade of Democrats hoping to
make a connection.

Beginning in 1976, taxpayers paid for the national
political conventions. The post-Watergate idea was to avoid corruption by using
public funds from the tax return checkoff for presidential campaigns. In 2012,
the Democratic and Republican parties each received about $18.2 million for
their conventions. Not this year.

Congress turned off the spigot in 2014 – except for
$100 million in security grants to law enforcement agencies in the two host
cities. The security money has been allocated separately since 9/11.

So, this year, lobbyists, labor unions and
corporations that have supported conventions in the past are bearing more costs
and having even more influence. This is progress?

Anachronistic though they are, conventions live on. So,
enjoy the spectacle of balloons and funny hats, but don’t take the speeches too
seriously.